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What I’m Watching Now Instead of “The Chair”
When universities went remote
I I know I’m not alone in feeling this way towards The Chair. As a long-time faculty member of a postcolonial English Department in a neoliberal university, I can’t bear to watch it.
I lasted till the end of the first episode. Yup, it’s definitely like that, I would catch myself saying. I could tell early on how insightful the show was going to be, except that I found it to be too close to actual experience. Too close for comfort. Too real, it’s triggering.
My husband, a chef, likes to watch culinary films that are chock-full of kitchen drama. He likes to be able to say, Yup, it’s definitely like that. So he didn’t quite get it why he was more excited than I was to watch The Chair, with popcorn on-hand.
A colleague from another English Department nailed it when he posted a similar reaction to Facebook. Watching The Chair for him felt like hanging out at the department again and getting dragged back into the thick of issues that he was so relieved to get away from with the suspension of onsite classes.
The comments and laughing emojis that flooded his post confirmed the sentiment to be widely shared. We’ve had a pandemic online academic year. Why would anyone want to relive what we’ve all been fortunate to escape from…
